Maximum Zoom Imagery Service

Overview

The Google Maps API provides map tiles at various
zoom levels for map type imagery. Most roadmap
imagery is available from zoom levels 0 to 18, for
example. Satellite imagery varies more widely as this
imagery is not generated, but directly photographed.

Because satellite imagery is not always available at
high zoom levels for remote locations — sparsely populated
areas or open ocean areas — you may want to
know the highest zoom level for imagery at a given location
beforehand. The MaxZoomService object provides a
simple interface for discovering the maximum zoom level at a
given location for which Google Maps has satellite imagery.

MaxZoom Requests

Accessing the MaxZoomService is asynchronous, since the
Google Maps API needs to make a call to an external server. For
that reason, you need to pass a callback method to execute
upon completion of the request. This callback method should process
the result.

To initiate a request to the MaxZoomService,
simply call getMaxZoomAtLatLng(), passing the
LatLng of the location and a callback function
to execute upon completion of the request.

MaxZoom Responses

When getMaxZoomAtLatLng() executes the callback
function, it will pass back two parameters:

status contains the MaxZoomStatus
of the request.

zoom contains the zoom level. If for some reason
the service fails, this value will not be present.

The status code may return one of the following values:

OK indicates that the service found the maximum zoom
level for satellite imagery.

ERROR indicates that the MaxZoom request
could not be processed.

The following example shows a map of metropolitan Tokyo.
Clicking anywhere on the map indicates the maximum zoom level
at that location. (Zoom levels around Tokyo generally vary
between zoom levels 18 and 21.)